The Couch
by jarndyce
Summary: Chandler always slept on his couch when Monica had dates, because he knew she'd need him eventually. Pre-London. CM. One-shot.


The couch in their apartment is well worn from all the nights he has spent there, fewer than ten steps away from his infinitely more comfortable bed, sleeping unsoundly and waiting—hoping, rudely, that she would stumble in and need him. Ever since her break up with Kip and him subsequently eloping with his girlfriend just a few short months later, Monica had tumbled through bad date after bad date, with men she typically wouldn't have thought of going out with twice, had she not been utterly depressed about her lack of boyfriend.

It was after a particularly memorable night that Chandler had taken to sleeping on the couch when she had dates. She'd come home at four in the morning, after a long night of drinking and dancing, and her date had given her the most earth-shaking kiss she had ever received before dropping the bomb that he was actually married. Tipsy and rattled, she'd stumbled into the apartment across the hall, not wanting to face Phoebe, who had unwittingly set her up with the guy. She had barely sat on Chandler's couch and put her head in her hands when he came out of his bedroom to see what the noise had been.

Monica had spilled her guts to him, not just about the horrible ending to her otherwise good date, but about her fears, and her doubt that she'd ever please her mother, or find the right guy. She talked about how she missed Kip, and how she felt Phoebe didn't understand her sometimes, how she felt that she was gaining weight, and how lonely she felt. Chandler had listened, and offered words of comfort when he had to, and got her the tissues when she finally allowed herself to cry on his shoulder. And when she was finished, frantically wiping the mascara stains from her cheeks so that she would stop looking quite so ridiculous, Chandler had kissed her, and she'd kissed back, forcing all of her frustration and her needs into the kiss.

"You and I are making out?" she had asked when they pulled apart finally, sounding both confused and at peace with it.

"Well, not anymore."

"But we don't do that."

"I know," he had said, and he made her sleep in his bed, taking the couch for himself.

Ever since then, Chandler slept on the couch whenever Monica raved about this exciting new man she was going out with. In the beginning, it was just because he knew she had a propensity for picking out the worst men possible to date, and it was more than likely that she would need some kind of comfort that she wasn't going to get from Phoebe. He wasn't even thinking of kissing her again—they hadn't kissed since that night, nor had they spoken about it, and that was okay with them. It had happened, but it was only kissing, and she had been so drunk that Chandler wasn't even positive that she would remember if he asked her about it.

After that first bad date, they got progressively worse, and she would be more of a mess every time she came into Chandler's apartment, stumbling onto the couch, and therefore his lap. He'd stroke her hair some, and listen to her complain about the guy she had been out with, and then she would kiss him until he walked her across the hall and made her go to bed, leaving a couple of aspirin on her bedside table for the morning.

It eased up a bit for a while, and Monica even went on a couple of good dates, but then Joey moved in, and it came out that Phoebe was all but moved out from Monica's apartment, and Monica felt that she was difficult to live with, and she had all of these personality flaws that made her unattractive, and she told them all about this great guy she met at the bar downstairs. Fielding questions from Joey, Chandler slept on the couch the night of Monica's date, and without fail she came in at half past midnight, half-falling onto Chandler.

"Chandler," she stage-whispered, poking his chest insistently.

"Yeah?" he asked, sitting up carefully and blinking.

"He kissed me, but it was terrible."

"I'm sorry, Mon."

"Could you? It would take his away."

So Chandler did, and then he made her go to bed again.

Through all of Monica's relationships, Chandler remembered to sleep on the couch whenever she mentioned a date. He suspected that she didn't even realize he did it; half the time he didn't even realize it, because it had become a reflex: Monica was going on a date, so he'd move a blanket and pillow to the couch and camp out on it for a night. Joey never made the connection, for which Chandler was extremely grateful. It was bad enough that he was sleeping on the far inferior couch, which was really too small for him to stretch comfortably on, but having Joey understand the reason behind it would be far worse than it just being his own secret. During every single night out with Richard, Chandler would sleep on the couch, some part of him begging for it to go wrong so that she would need him again; and he felt horrible for thinking it, because more than anything he was her friend and he wanted her to be happy, but he couldn't help but think that when she was happy, he was getting ripped off. He wasn't her savior anymore.

When she wasn't in a stable relationship, Chandler found himself sighing in relief, even as he tried to suppress what that feeling of relief truly meant. It wasn't that he wanted to date Monica, but he had begun to feel obsolete, sleeping on the couch and waking up disappointed every morning when she hadn't made an appearance the night before. Even when Chandler was in a relationship, he tried to make sure he was free when Monica was on dates. And the kissing—he tried to make that scarce when he was dating somebody, but it was so hard to say no to a maudlin, tipsy Monica whom he'd made it his duty to help whenever she came home from a terrible night out. The kissing wasn't cheating because that had been his responsibility before he was dating Janice, or Kathy, before he had even met them.

Those drunken visits always came fairly regularly when Monica was not in a serious relationship, and they never dropped off to the very end. Just a week before Ross's wedding, she had come in, exhausted, and kissed Chandler squarely on the mouth just once before showing herself back across the hall, shrugging off his efforts to help make sure she made it to bed. So that night, in London, was an experience so close to how Chandler knew kissing Monica to be that it was a shock to be doing it before she had gotten to the bad date stage with anyone. Of course, she was drunk just the same, but this was different. For the first time, Chandler felt like she knew what she was doing in kissing him, and that it wasn't just that drunken make-out before she went to go crash across the hall—it was a kiss that said quite clearly that they were going somewhere that night.

"You and I are making out?" he said at one point that night, echoing her words, the same ones that had replayed in his head for years.

"Well, not anymore," she returned, and Chandler felt a jolt go through him. She had remembered that first night all along.

"But we don't do that," he said.

"I know."

And no other words had ever been so fitting to the two of them.


End file.
